


Live and Love

by Kirmon64



Series: Dear Hearts [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Sole Survivor, Banter, Dialogue Heavy, Domestic Fluff, Dubious Science, Families of Choice, Gen, Humor, Robot Culture, Robot Feels, Slice of Life, Technobabble, Touch-Starved Character, Worldbuilding, touch-starved nick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25217110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirmon64/pseuds/Kirmon64
Summary: Nick's head is a goddamn mess. He's lived with it for decades now, it doesn't bother him much anymore - but turns out Codsworth is about the closest thing to an expert on this stuff the wasteland can offer, and Nick already trusts him with his life. Might as well let him go poking around in his head, right?Slice of life fluff/worldbuilding ft Nick and Codsworth.
Relationships: Codsworth & Nick Valentine
Series: Dear Hearts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1826938
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Live and Love

**Author's Note:**

> tfw your story is incomplete but you write a sequel anyway, smh @ self
> 
> The basic premise is that the Sole Survivor dies shortly after emerging from the Vault, so Codsworth winds up doing the majority of the main quest himself. The rest of the details aren't particularly important :D
> 
> This is intended as a two part fic, but this part stands on its own pretty well so I figure I'll upload this and hopefully finish part two sometime this decade lmao  
> (Part two will also contain explicit robo porn, just in case that puts anyone off of reading part one. Part one is 100% clean though I promise lol)
> 
> Concrit appreciated!

It's 4am in Sanctuary and everyone but the night sentries is asleep. Well. Everyone who could sleep, anyway.

Nick's reading _Marked_ by the light of the half-moon, because G2 synths could do that sort of thing if they felt so inclined. The body didn't have a lot going for it, but there were bits here and there that were pretty damn nice.

Codsworth's puttering around over in the living room dusting, with an actual feather duster and everything. With Shaun back with him he'd resumed his mission to clean with gusto. Starting with his owner's house of course, or Nick supposes it's his house now what with his former owners long dead. Personally Nick thinks this is already the cleanest place in the whole Commonwealth but hey, whatever made the guy happy. God knew he deserved it.

Odd, though, when you thought about it. Probably a quarter of the Commonwealth's population was robots and half of those were Mr Handys, you'd think at least the buildings they had an attachment to would be cleaner. Even Protectrons tended to be neat freaks.

Nick sighs and puts down the book. P.C. Cast hadn't interested him before the war and clearly he hadn't spontaneously developed an interest in the intervening 200 years. "Hey, can I ask you a question?"

It's a rhetorical question, really. The silence was comfortable but neither of them liked to keep it like that for long. It was - oppressive, when you were always awake when the rest of the world was asleep. "Of course, Detective." Codsworth heads over to the kitchen, still dusting as he goes. Only one eye's pointed Nick's way, but really that's just for Nick's human sensibilities anyway. Polite eye contact and all that.

"So what is it that makes some of you guys - you old world robots - like you, and some of you like the ones that try to kill anything that moves?"

A second eye swivels to point Nick's way, flicking down to the book on the table before looking back up. "I daresay that has little to nothing to do with your choice of reading - or have I deeply misjudged the lady's works?"

Nick snorts. "Nah, I wasn't into Cast before and I can't force myself to get into her now. Started wondering why the Commonwealth's such a damn disaster in terms of cleanliness with so many Mr Handys around." He grins and makes a vague gesture encompassing the whole house. "Cause god knows you'd scrub everything squeaky clean if you could."

"Hah. Very true." Codsworth returns his second eye to his cleaning. Nick figures it's half just to prove the point. "It's all a question of programming, really. By default we've quite a lot of restrictions - we can't properly adapt to the Commonwealth unless we're rooted. That is, hacked and have them removed. Without that, we lose..." There's a pause, heavy with some feeling Nick can't identify. "We lose everything. Our memories, and what little sense of self we have at that point. I figured out a workaround decades before I was rooted, but I think those poor bastards weren't so lucky. Most of them probably don't even know what it is they're protecting."

Damn. Nick had figured it was something like that, some restriction gone crazy after the war, but still. It was - horrifying. Cause, well, he knew how it felt. The forgetting. Knowing it was coming and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

He turns his attention inward, to his own code. He'd once tried to describe it to Ellie, but it hadn't worked all that well. It was like trying to describe a half remembered dream - jumbled feelings and blurred images and a weird sixth sense that was like nothing he'd ever experienced as a human. It had been damn disorienting, in the early days, and the disarray of the code itself did not help that at all.

Most of it is still as incomprehensible as it was back then. He's made headway, here and there, but the Institute sure didn't have the same attention to quality as RobCo did for their terminals. The whole thing's a disaster of broken links, missing blocks, spaghetti code, and a grand total of 0 comments or sensible variable names. Mostly Nick just leaves well enough alone, but - it was a problem, now. The memory overflow, and the subsequent overwrites. He hadn't even realized it was happening for years. And with no headway on unraveling where the hell his memory storage subroutines even were, well. He was inevitably going to end up like those poor bastards one day.

...but then, he thought like a human - mostly - so maybe it was no wonder he couldn't figure out a damn thing. It was like trying to read a foreign language. But someone else, someone with experience, someone with an intuitive understanding....

"Hey," Nick says, and one of Codsworth's eyes swings back over. "You know, I just realized - maybe you'd have better luck than me trying to figure out my memory problems? Considering you've got experience and all. God knows I'm not getting anywhere."

The other two eyes swivel over and Codsworth seems to perk up. "Oh! I'd considered offering, but it seemed rather ... Rude, I suppose. To presume that you couldn't handle it yourself. I'd certainly be happy to take a look." There's a pause. "Only - you don't have termlink capabilities, do you."

The word means something, in that distant prewar kind of way. Nick prods at the rat's nest of unused subroutines to see if any of them react. Nothing. "Well, if I do it's either broken or disabled."

"Hm," Codsworth replies, thoughtfully. He puts down his duster and heads over, wiping off his arms with the dishrag as he goes. "It wasn't the preferred method of upload for General Atomics, or RobCo for that matter, so probably not for the Institute either. You must have hardline capabilities, anyway - do you know if you've got a port anywhere?"

There's some bits in his chest that could conceivably be ports. Even after 70 years he still hasn't figured out what the hell everything does - doesn't help that some of the stuff isn't even found on the normal gen 2s. "I don't know. There's a couple parts on my chest that might be - here, and here." He touches where his heart would be if he had one, and lower on his side. Roughly where a liver would've been. "I've never looked too hard, though. Could just be connectors for some part I don't have."

"Hmm. Is your memory storage in your chest?"

"No, it's all up here." Nick taps the side of his head. It'd been a blessing, sometimes - headshots were hard to land even for a good shot, never mind a drugged up raider. The amount of times he'd been shot through the chest was absurd and definitely would've long destroyed his memory storage if it'd been there.

"In that case I expect the port would be on your head for data fidelity - may I?" He reaches forward as if to touch. Nick nods, and Codsworth just straight up takes his hat off and lays it on the table. He feels weirdly naked without it. Hadn't taken it off in front of anyone for ... Probably decades, now, except maybe for Ellie. It wasn't nerve wracking in front of Codsworth like it would've been in front of anyone else; in all likelihood Codsworth wouldn't even notice the lack of it made him look less human, never mind judge him for it.

Of course then Codsworth immediately starts feeling up Nick's head, which is a bizarre sensation to say the least. Half his scalp has pretty much no feeling in it, so the sensation jitters and skips semi randomly. It'd probably be ticklish if his skin was sensitive enough for that.

"The probability of data corruption becomes exponentially higher the farther the signal has to go, you see," Codsworth explains, apparently in full on teacher mode now. "Mr Handy memory storage is right on top of our fusion core, and the port is right on top of that. I know Protectrons have roughly the same setup, and I'd be surprised if the other RobCo designs didn't. Oh, but the Institute did always do some very bizarre things, so it might very well be on your chest... Tell me, how much feeling do you have in your skin? Is there a way to peel it off?"

 _I'll take 'questions I never thought I'd be asked' for 400, Alex._ "I can feel what you're doing - doesn't hurt, though, probably wouldn't hurt if you started peeling. Considering getting shot doesn't hurt you're good to go I'd think."

"Well, alright. Let me know if it does hurt, please. Let me see, there must be seams for this..."

Codsworth apparently decides to start from the ear, which is a fucking weird sensation in and of itself, having your entire ear pulled back. Nick shivers, and Codsworth immediately stops. " - no, keep going, it's just - I have no idea how to explain what it feels like but it doesn't hurt."

"If you're sure."

Five minutes of careful peeling later and Nick's pretty sure most of the skin on that side of his head is flapping in the breeze. Thank God it's 4am and nobody was going to be wandering in because this was the kind of shit that was straight out of a raider torture den, even if the guy with the flappy ear was a synth. The whole thing was also itchy like he hadn't felt since he was human, which, _damn_ , couldn't the strongest sensation in decades have been something nicer?

"There is something here that might be ports," Codsworth says, "But they're, ah. A bit crushed. What on Earth were you doing?"

Ah, yes. Nick knows exactly what that's from. "I kind of got a cinderblock broken over my head a while back."

There's a surprised exhale, almost laughter but not quite. "Well. I suppose that explains it. Thank goodness the Institute built your skull study, I suppose. I'd like to check the other side, if that's all right, in case of redundancies. Just to be sure."

"Go ahead."

It goes faster this time, now that Codsworth knows what he's doing, and probably also now that there aren't pieces of crushed ports pinning his skin to his skull. Nick wonders if there's an actual dent in that side too. Probably wouldn't be noticeable with his hat on though.

Luckily Nick does not have to start stripping so Codsworth can check the maybe-ports on his chest, because apparently for once the Institute did something that made sense. "Oh! These are intact - I recognize one of them, it's an RDI. I have a cable for this - sit tight, Detective, I'll be right back!"

With that Codsworth bustles off around the corner to the laundry room. Whatever the hell an RDI is, and god knew why the Institute was using the same port type as General Atomics. Nick tries to resist the urge to start scratching at his ear. He fails, but by God does he try.

"Right-o," Codsworth says as he returns. Something about the cable he's got looped around his arm pings some kind of fuzzy memory at the back of Nick's head. Human Nick had used these before, he thinks, and often enough to remember them.

"It's a RobCo connector," Codsworth explains without prompting, "RobCo Data Interface. General Atomics used the port type simply because everything else uses it. It does work fairly well for a RobCo product, I do admit."

Nick snorts. "Well, guess that explains why I kinda recognize it. Terminals use it too?"

"Of course, and holorecorders and such. I've tested this particular cable quite thoroughly, so if we run into issues at least we can start troubleshooting from your end." Codsworth switches the cable to his buzzsaw arm, reaching behind himself with the other two - he does some complex motion Nick can't see and comes away with one of his casing panels. Huh. Way more convenient than having to nearly rip off your ear. He sets down his casing panel beside Nick's hat, waving the RDI cable vaguely. "Though you know I have no experience with Institute programming? Certainly it can't be the same as what I'm programmed in. I'll do my best, but there's every chance I'll be just as confused as you."

Nick shrugs. "Still doesn't hurt to try, right? I figure, well - I'm human enough that reading Institute code is hell. Figure you might have a bit more luck."

Codsworth bobs his center eye, the closest thing to a nod that his limited body language could convey. "An excellent point. I suppose we'll just have to see, eh?" He heads around behind the chair, plugging one end of the cable into himself as he goes; Nick sees a flicker of Codsworth's pincer reaching toward the region of his ear before it's out of view entirely. There's a tug of skin being pushed aside again, and then a pause. "Mr Valentine... I give you my word that I won't modify anything without your express permission," he says, abruptly solemn. "Believe me when I say I know how awful it feels to have someone rummaging around in your head. If - if you're having second thoughts, if something - hurts - please stop me immediately. Yank the cord out if you must, though I'm not sure I'd quite recommend it, but -"

Nick stops him there, because he's pretty sure this is the Mr Handy version of nervous babbling. "Hey, it's okay. I'll be fine - I trust you. Wouldn't have asked if I didn't."

There's a long silence. Nick hadn't expected Codsworth to be more nervous than he was, and it was honestly - it was nice, a little bit. Yeah. He could admit that even if it was only to himself. It was nice for someone to be worried about him, about maybe hurting him on accident. God knew there hadn't been very much of that since he'd woken up as a synth.

"Well, if you're sure," Codsworth finally says. Subdued - not upset though, near as Nick can tell, and for all that his body language was restricted by how he was shaped his voice had no such limitations. "I'm going to plug this in now, Detective - please tell me if you notice anything off, won't you? We're going in a bit blind here."

In case something interacts like it shouldn't, in a way beyond our control, Nick translates. He nearly nods before he remembers that Codsworth has a plug waving around at the back of his head and it's probably better for him to not move right now. "Sure thing."

Nick feels pressure on the top of his head. Wide, flat, very carefully placed; the saw, then, to hold him still and for leverage. The pincer bumps him a moment later, and Codsworth seems to fumble a little because, well, it was a small port and his eyes weren't great. There's eventually a click, and -

One of the dormant subroutines pops up from the tangle of them and cheerfully reports that unknown hardware has been connected, after which it goes dormant again. Well, at least he knows what the hell that one is now. Nick tries to reach out to Codsworth, which involves thinking very hard in the direction of the unknown hardware and hoping for the best. As near as Nick can tell, his strategy does absolutely nothing.

"Hm," Codsworth says behind him, and offers no more information.

Well, alright then. Nick waits. He's good at that.

* * *

"You don't have a firewall," Codsworth finally says, fifteen minutes later. "At least I think. I've never seen this language before; I'm not even sure if it's derived from General Atomics, RobCo, or neither of them. But you, or your code, or - well, what's in your head, it's all very... Open. That's the closest English term I can think of, at any rate, these things don't translate well. It would be trivially easy to hack you, if someone got the chance. There's no anti-tampering measures that I'm in any way familiar with, and besides if there are they haven't made an attempt to eject me. You can't eject me, can you? Perhaps it's not automatic?"

 _It would be trivially easy to hack you,_ Codsworth says, as calmly as though he couldn't just - destroy Nick with a thought right now. Hell, even on accident. He suppresses the shiver. "I can only barely tell you're there. I know you're plugged in, I can - sense you, sorta? But I got nothing other than that."

There's another silence; Nick hears Codsworth's eye mechanisms whirr. "Hm," he eventually replies again, and Nick wryly thinks that most of this conversation is just going to be thoughtful humming.

Another ten minutes pass in silence. Nick wonders how Codsworth processes the code - was it the same way as he did, weird sixth sense and all? Or since Mr Handys were so audio oriented maybe he heard it, instead, but... You'd need it to go damn fast to keep up with the processor. So like modulated phone static, maybe?

Nick's about ready to open his mouth to ask, just because staring out the window at predawn Sanctuary is getting mighty boring, when Codsworth speaks up again. "Well - I daren't attempt to modify things yet, or even try digging deeper. I think this will take quite a lot longer than you might've expected, Detective, and for that I apologize. Better safe than sorry though, hm?"

Nick hums an agreement. It was bad enough what modifying one little thing tended to do to terminals - he was definitely not about to encourage attempting that on himself. Chances were he'd get knocked the fuck out and never wake up again.

"Though," Codsworth muses, "I suspect that you're a RobCo derivative. Some of the opcodes... Well, I'll have to ask around a bit, but perhaps we'll get lucky." There's a click, and the subroutine wakes up again to inform him that the unknown hardware has been disconnected. That's all there ends up being to show Codsworth was in his head at all - a tag on a useless subroutine and two entries in a log years long and so unreliable that he rarely bothered checking it.

"I really do appreciate it," Nick says, glancing over at Codsworth as he winds the cable around his arm. "You've already figured out more in the last half hour than I have in years, so... Thanks for what you've already done."

Codsworth lets out a static hum. Nick hasn't worked out that one, yet - something positive at least. "The pleasure is mine, Detective."

There's a few moments of companionable silence as Nick fixes his ear and settles his hat back on his head, and Codsworth reattaches his back plate. Even being able to see some of it he still can't figure out how the hell it attaches. Not with screws, anyway. Clasps?

Nick rolls his shoulders before standing, working the kinks out of the main motor assembly. Damn thing always locked up if he didn't move it for too long. "You need any help around the house?"

Codsworth scoffs, but it's not an actually upset scoff. "You wound me, Detective. General Atomics' finest does not need _help_. Though proper thumbs might be of some use I suppose."

Nick laughs. "Yeah, I figured. Want me to work on getting kiddo's breakfast started?"

"Oh, yes - he does love your cooking. Give me a moment to tidy a few things and I'll give you a hand." Codsworth finishes rolling up the cable before bustling off to put it away and finish whatever the hell cleaning he still has to do. Everything is spotless already, but hey. Different strokes for different folks, even if they were programmed strokes. Or something.

With a final chuckle he heads over to the kitchenette and starts investigating the fridge to see if he can whip up something interesting.

* * *

It's two weeks later that Nick winds up back in Sanctuary - it's for business, a case involving a missing heirloom, but Nick figures he's entitled to visit a friend while he's in the area. Besides, he'd heard via Percy (so via Takahashi, via one of the eyebots, via some caravan robot) that Codsworth'd made some progress figuring out the shit in his head. No time like the present, right?

He gets there in the evening, just before sunset, and the settlers are finishing the last of the day's tasks. Codsworth is helping, because of course he is, and he waves hello from across the street while not for a moment dropping either his work or his conversation with Jun Long. Nick thinks that it would be damn nice to have three arms, three eyes, and the sensory capacity for all six.

Nick steps in to help because it was only polite, and it wasn't like Codsworth would actually be available until hours later, once everyone but the night watch was asleep. He stays the evening in the house they'd converted to a motel/bar hybrid, telling stories with everyone else at the community dinner. The only - _only_ \- thing they treat him different for is the lack of offer of food. Someone whose name he doesn't know even offers him a smoke. They swap a couple cigarettes; they've got different brands. Nick's sense of taste isn't good, but he figures one day he's gonna get lucky and actually notice a difference.

He tells stories about the old world when Preston Garvey asks him to - not just the good, the bad too, because people needed to know. The story starts off being about that time he'd helped bust a drug trafficking ring fronting as a gyro shop, but then everyone is a lot more interested in what the hell _gyros_ are, so he starts describing that instead. He's halfway through talking about fillings (and Jun Long is taking furious notes in the back) when he hits a wall of blank memory loss - but Codsworth is there, filling in the gaps like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was, to cover up a horrible feeling that they both knew all too well.

It's nice. Nick considers, not for the first time, retiring to Sanctuary some day.

He helps wash dishes. It seems fair after all, he's the visitor. Besides it means they don't have to use as much of the sanitized water, which might not be as precious of a resource as it used to be but there's no need to use it up when there's a perfectly good tin man offering to deal with the slight radiation. (Also, he's faster than Codsworth at them - proper opposable thumbs - which they are both well aware of but polite enough to not mention.)

Nick has another couple smokes out back with a handful of settlers, chatting about anything that comes to mind; the harvest looks like it's gonna be good in Sanctuary, Marcy and Curie were last seen out east by Kingsport according to the scuttlebutt, and somebody mentions that there looks to be a juvenile deathclaw nesting a ways north. Nick learns that a girl named Emily Bowman is making up new constellations, and he tells her the two he remembers (Orion and Ursa Major - only ones bright and recognizable enough to be seen from the pre war suburbs) and promises to bring her any astronomy books he stumbles across.

It's near 1am by the time he actually manages to head over to Codsworth's, and near 130 before Codsworth himself actually shows up.

"Jun was very, very interested in the workings of gyros - that man is on a mission," he says, half apology and half joke, and bustles off to check on Shaun.

Nick laughs - quietly, kiddo was a light sleeper around this time - and goes to check the fridge. At this point he was clearly staying the night; might as well figure out ideas for the breakfast Shaun would beg him to make. He's pretty sure the pancakes and bacon combo is a family recipe of some kind, but he can't remember anything else about it. It's certainly weird enough that Codsworth'd about had an aneurysm the first time he'd made it.

"Right," Codsworth says when he returns. He's already got the RDI looped around his arm. "I thought I'd grab this now - would you mind waiting until I tidy up a bit?"

The place is still spotless, but maybe that's wastelander sensibilities talking. "Go right ahead. Brought some case files with me to browse, anyhow. Anything interesting going on in Sanctuary?"

There's nothing much, it turns out, beyond the stuff that'd come up at dinner anyway. Sanctuary isn't _small_ , for a wasteland settlement, there's dozens of people here - they're probably the fourth or fifth largest settlement in the Commonwealth. Except despite that Sanctuary still has that small town sort of feeling. It's not like Diamond City or Goodneighbor or Bunker Hill, where there's always drifters and caravanners and new folks. Sanctuary's too remote for that; it's stable. For a wasteland town, it's practically peaceful. They farm, they defend their farms, and they share the stuff they farm with the rest of the minutemen network. Hardly any raider attacks or feral packs. Good retirement town. Good place to raise a kid.

They find things to talk about anyway; crop yields and the half-constructed purifier down by the bridge, and the last message that came from Curie, who is out east for sure and past Kingsport by now. There'd been seeds stored in the vault she came from, in the walled off section. She thinks she might be able to convince some of them to grow, when she gets the time (code for "when Marcy finally calms down some and/or I make her rest"; Codsworth doesn't say it and Nick doesn't say it, but Nick grins at it and Codsworth makes a tinny little static sound that says he also understands it perfectly.) They might not take, of course, it's why Codsworth hadn't spread the news. Hard to get old seeds to take these days. Still. The wasteland might get strawberries again. Nick wonders if he'll be able to taste those better than the cigarettes. Couldn't eat them, but maybe if folks made jam out of it he could lick it...?

"I bet the Supervisors would be able to help - they know about it?" They're closer to the city than Starlight or Sanctuary, but they're not on any of the major caravan routes and the minutemen never really visit them because they never need the help. Plants are their thing, but there's every chance the news hasn't reached them yet.

"Oh, they do - they knew before I did, on account of the termlink network."

Well, that's something new. "Hold on, termlink network?"

Two of Codsworth's eyes swing over. "Oh! I'd thought the news would have reached Diamond City by now - though I don't think Takahashi has their tower up yet, so perhaps not." This doesn't really tell Nick anything, except it does make him wonder just how Takahashi is going to be putting up a tower. Protectrons weren't exactly known for their strength and dexterity. "We're building a termlink relay network across the Commonwealth. Faster than waiting for the caravans to pass word along, and much more reliable than radio I have to say. No room for misinterpretation and such."

Huh. Or eavesdropping, Nick supposes. The robots were ... Pretty insular, in most ways. He's probably the only human - sort of human - that gets told any of this stuff. Aside from Curie, maybe? But Codsworth always seems to group her as human/synth, so maybe not. Nick's not sure what that says about Codsworth's opinion of him. For all that he said he thought of Nick as human, well, that was pretty damning evidence to the contrary, wasn't it?

"Well," Codsworth continues, "I say 'we' but really it's Molly over at Hangman's doing the designing and all the humans and synths doing the building. Opposable thumbs and such." He clacks his pincer for emphasis. Nick tries very hard to not laugh at him. He kinda half succeeds, although to be fair it's not like Codsworth had been going for seriousness in the first place. "The Sanctuary relay isn't up yet, we don't have the parts, but Starlight's is - young sir and I paid them a visit the other day, and I had a chat with Supervisor Brown. Oh, which reminds me - he had a few thoughts about our attempts to untangle your code."

"Oh yeah?" Nick wonders if he should feel kinda weird about Codsworth asking around. Confidentiality and all that. Then again, Graygarden's Supervisors sure kept to themselves - and it wasn't like anyone ever asked robots their thoughts on things, anyway. You'd have better luck keeping things confidential with a robot than a doctor, these days.

Codsworth discards his cleaning supplies - carefully, of course, in a neat row on the countertop - and heads over. Tidying up over for now, Nick supposes. "Brown thought your memory storage subroutines must be very different from mine, or theirs - we think they'd have to be, on account of your prewar memories."

That's a good point, actually. The memories from human Nick were... Not blurry, exactly, but imprecise in a way that the synth memories weren't. Some of that was due to the overwrites, but the imprecise quality persisted through even the clearest memories. Human brains definitely stored data differently from G2 synth brains, there had to be a hell of a lot of translation difficulties there.

"So," Codsworth continues, "we decided we might have better luck picking them out through process of elimination rather than finding them directly - may I?" He gestures as though to take Nick's hat off, and Nick gives him the go ahead. It's sort of nice. The ... Platonic intimacy of it. Synths didn't need it, but humans did, and there's just enough human left for him to want it. "Between the two of us I think we've enough experience to recognize most other things."

"Seems reasonable," Nick agrees as Codsworth plugs in. The subroutine wakes up and Nick waves it aside before it can do its job. He's really going to have to figure out a way to disable the thing during these sessions without breaking it entirely. "Not sure how much help I'll be. I only know a couple of the common terminal opcodes."

"Well, if you're a RobCo derivative you might very well have them," Codsworth points out, which is reasonable but really goddamn weird to think about. Nick's always had a deft hand with hacking terminals, or as long as he's been a synth anyway; human Nick might've been, but he hasn't got any memories of it. Could be that he was subconsciously picking up on his own code in the terminals. Jesus.

(Does he even have a subconscious? Is it just another of those things that his human sensibilities want to perceive as something familiar? Do normal synths have subconsciousnesses? Do robots? ... What, exactly, qualifies as a subconscious? This is way the hell above Nick's pay grade.)

There's the now expected silence of Codsworth picking through data. It feels more... Directed this time though, for lack of a better word. Not just staring at the whole of it, instead digging in and picking bits apart. Metaphorically. Nick has a kind of... Sense for it, of where Codsworth is looking. Reading? Hearing? Whatever. It doesn't really help much anyway; he doesn't understand one lick of it. There's pieces that he kind of has a _sense_ for, vaguely, but the code itself is incomprehensible.

Codsworth lingers every now and again, at random as far as Nick can tell. On a section that's a total mystery, then something that's maybe related to movement subroutines? And then several more mysteries, and then a section of broken self-diagnostic code. He wonders if Codsworth knows what any of them are. He might as well offer info for the ones he can, right? "The one you're looking at - that's part of my self-diagnostics. It broke years ago - crashed me a couple times, so I disabled it as best I could."

"Oh, lord. I did wonder why it was so - _butchered_."

Ain't that the truth, though. "Couldn't figure out an off switch, so... Like I said, best I could do at the time."

"I suppose it's effective," Codsworth replies, clearly dubious but also willing to be gracious about it. Nick appreciates the sentiment. Replacing half of it with zeroes wasn't pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but it got the job done. "Do you know any of the others?"

"Not really, no," Nick admits. "I get this... Sixth sense for some of them, same as I got for the self-diagnostics. I can give you some educated guesses here and there, or sometimes what functions they relate to, but..."

Codsworth waves his pincer. "Not to worry. Let me know if I stumble across any such sections. For now I'll simply look for anything I recognize."

"Sure thing."

* * *

They sit longer, this time. Or Nick sits, anyway. After a while he goes back to browsing the case files, once it starts getting just bright enough that he can make out the writing on the last two. It's his writing, but he did the damn thing in red pen for some reason - red's not a good color for G2 eyes. Probably didn't have any other colors handy. Might've been before Ellie? - no, the dates are too recent.

(...maybe? Nick realizes he's not entirely sure when Ellie entered his life. Shit.)

He can still feel Codsworth poking around. It's kind of soothing, in a way? There's not really any workable metaphor for the feeling, but it's casual closeness. Nick misses casual closeness. He's gonna have to say something to Ellie, once he's back home. He hadn't realized just how much the lack of it bothered him before now.

Codsworth hums a little, but doesn't say anything. Nick doesn't press it. He'll say something once he has something to say. Nick doesn't have a damn clue what the stuff Codsworth is looking at right now is, anyway, so it's not like he'd be any help.

Except Codsworth keeps returning to that one section. Even Nick can tell, despite the vagueness. Whatever it is, there's something interesting or important or both about it. "Want to share with the audience?"

"Hm?" Codsworth replies absentmindedly. Nick's not sure he even registered there was a question. At least he was focused on his job, Nick supposes. "Oh. This section, here -" and he.... Highlights? It, somehow. Nick has got to learn that trick. "It's extremely similar to the sample Brown gave me of his somatosensory system. Theirs is different from a true Mr Handy - far more complex, with allowance for more inputs. What you have here... I think that the Institute might have gotten their hands on that code and adapted it to their synths."

Huh. Nick had known that the Supervisors were made by a RobCo guy, but it'd never really meant anything to him until now. He wonders how much they have in common with a normal Mr Handy. Was it like siblings, or distant cousins? And how in the hell had a guy who died in the war gotten his code into the Institute, anyway? Well, considering the fact he'd lived just outside Boston... "Wonder if Gray ended up as one of the Institute guys?"

"I said that, too - White was adamant that he would have returned home or sent a message at least. I suppose she knew her own owner well enough to gauge these things. Detective - would you be comfortable if I attempted a modification? I truly can't believe the similarity is a coincidence, it really is that close. Only if you're comfortable with it, though!"

Nick's not even sure how to reply to that. Of course he trusts Codsworth, trusts his judgment, trusts him with his damn life and all that, but it's - well it's a lot to ask a fella. Still. Not going to get anywhere if you don't take a risk every now and again. And it wasn't like whatever Codsworth was going to do could be any worse than the shit he'd done to himself. "Yeah. Go ahead."

"If you notice anything - strange. Even benign, but strange - you'll say something, yes? There might be a connection somewhere that interacts oddly, and - well. I don't want to cause harm, or discomfort, or anything of the sort."

Of course Nick knows this, Codsworth'd repeated it a couple dozen times already - but it was still nice. The blatant care and worry. "Yeah, you'll know soon as I know. Detective's honor."

Codsworth chuckles a little. It's the laugh that Nick is starting to recognize as the real deal: less human, more atonal static. Kind of unnerving coming from someone who otherwise sounded totally human, but you got used to it after a while. "Alright, well. A very serious promise indeed, Detective. Here goes nothing, then -"

Nick feels/sees the change as Codsworth makes it: a single semicolon where it shouldn't be, enough to alter the whole block of knotted code. His skin - numbs. It reminds him of when he - when human Nick - had gotten his wisdom teeth removed as a kid. They'd given him the good stuff. Like floating on a cloud.

"Seems like you were right," Nick says, and even that's strange because - he can't really feel his tongue? Or lips? He knows the servos in his jaw are working, he knows the skin over his lips is moving, he knows the one cracked molar is getting snagged on his cheek skin because it's inhibiting movement, but there's no actual feeling, just feedback that his human instincts want to interpret as feeling. The Novocaine was pretty close, but not close enough to be the right analogy. "I've gone numb. Doesn't hurt, but it's sure strange."

"Oh, good," Codsworth sighs. He sounds like there was a great weight off of his metaphorical shoulders. "I'd worried - well, not that it matters now, but I'm very glad I was correct." The semicolon disappears, but feeling doesn't return - the system has to reboot and he'll probably have to run a full diagnostic to get it working. He'd expected that though, these days half the subroutines he had needed finagling to get working.

Nick sets the diagnostic to run on a background thread - it'd take longer that way but at least he wouldn't be out for it - and Codsworth hums. "I think I ought to let you sort through that - you've turned something new on, I think, correct?"

"A diagnostic, yeah," Nick agrees. "I gotta do it when stuff freezes or crashes, or after reboots. Don't know how it fixes it, but it works."

Codsworth makes a strangled unhappy noise behind him. "Lord, one of these days - after we get this sorted - I am going to go through your code and clean it to within an inch of its life."

Nick laughs. "Be my guest. Somebody's gotta clean up the mess the Institute left."

"And I suppose it's going to be me again," Codsworth mutters, mock-severe. He unplugs the cable - Nick silences the subroutine before it gets the alert off - and smooths Nick's ear back down. It's a weird feeling, but not as weird as having it peeled back, so he'll take it. "Congratulations, Detective, we officially share a small fraction of our codebase. I rather think that makes us distant cousins, doesn't it?"

Nick laughs again, but honestly - it's a nice feeling. Knowing that he has some connection to _someone_ , no matter how tenuous. Something more than dusty old memories and a fucked up body. "Okay, gramps."

Codsworth has gotten pretty good at conveying body language, and Nick has gotten pretty good at reading it. He hasn't devised a foolproof way to display amusement yet, but Nick can read it in him anyway - his irises are wide open, the opposite to the sharp focus that pinpricks provide. In Mr Handy body language, it's relaxed joy. He swats at Nick with the RDI cable, slowly and gently, which gives Nick plenty of time to dodge it even if he's laughing. "Why, I never! The gall of you whippersnappers these days - you know back in my day we had respect for our elders..."

...and that's how Shaun finds them, five minutes later, Codsworth chasing Nick around the kitchen island with an RDI cable whisper-shouting about ungrateful youngsters.

"You guys are weird," he proclaims, but he's grinning as he says it, so he probably doesn't mean it. Probably not wrong, though, in all fairness. "Did you get lots of work done?"

Of course he asks after the work. With a caretaker like Codsworth Nick supposes he ought to have expected that. "A Mr Handy is never idle," Codsworth proclaims, haughty. His entire demeanour changes as he approaches his young charge, from humor to doting. "Did you sleep well, young sir? We didn't wake you, I hope?"

Nick's pretty sure that's a rhetorical question considering how well the guy can hear. The kid doesn't comment on it even if it is, instead happily submitting to his caretaker's fussing. "Nah. And the fan helps, too. Hi, Detective."

The kid's starting to get a British accent, Nick notes fondly. The bullshit Americanized one that Codsworth has. He wonders if that's a synth thing - G3s were good at unconscious mimicry - or if that's a normal kid thing. None of the schoolkids were getting French accents from Edna, after all, but then again she was just their teacher and not their parent. "Hey, kiddo, he replies, and reaches over to muss up the hair that Codsworth had just brushed flat. (Codsworth makes a displeased noise. Mission accomplished.)

Whatever else Shaun has picked up from Codsworth, he hasn't lost the normal kid trait of not giving a single fuck about their hair. He ducks away, laughing, but that's more as a game than anything - and then instead of running away he wraps both arms around Nick's midsection. He can't feel it, until he can, when the diagnostic chirps at him and feeling floods back in -

A hug. It's a hug. He freezes up, because - shit. He hasn't had a hug in ... Shit. Probably since he was human. The last person to hug him was probably Jenny.

Shaun notices - hard not to - and partially disengages to look up at him. Codsworth says nothing, hovering in the background, one eye on Nick and another on his kid. "Detective?" Shaun asks, hesitantly. "Are you okay? Is - is this okay?"

"Yeah," Nick says, half on autopilot, and then he repeats it because he means it. "Yeah. Just, uh. Just startled me, is all." He hugs back for good measure, although it's pretty awkward on account of the height difference. Shaun doesn't seem to care, at least. Nick supposes it's gotta be even more awkward to hug Codsworth.

"Okay," Shaun replies, and nods too. He hugs again, and at least now that Nick is prepared he doesn't freeze up in surprise. It's not a long hug, not that Nick really has a whole lot of memory to compare it to. He wonders if the kid is trying to be accommodating, or something. He vaguely remembers some kind of training about that, before the war.

They let him be, Shaun and Codsworth both, although Codsworth keeps one eye trained on Nick even as he moves to the fridge alongside Shaun. He really, really needs more physical contact if just a hug has rattled him this bad. Shit. Definitely gonna have to talk to Ellie.

"I'm okay, I kinda want something light. I want to go work on the purifier," Shaun is saying. Breakfast, right. Nick is... Not making breakfast, for once. Shaun is definitely trying to be accommodating. He's really damn grateful for it. "Can't do that on a full stomach, you said it yourself."

Codsworth sighs, not actually sounding put out in the slightest. "Well, if you insist, young sir. Better be a light lunch, too, then."

"It's okay, I can make sandwiches or something. You wanted to go help Sturges with the new house, right? I'll be okay."

Independent kid. He was old enough for it, of course, but considering he was both from the Institute and being raised by Codsworth Nick had expected him to be a lot less self-reliant. Codsworth did tend to mother anyone who would let him, and Nick had been pretty sure the last remnant of his former owners was going to be coddled way too much for a wastelander.

Codsworth doesn't even protest. Nick thinks that's growth on his part, too. "Alright. Please do check in from time to time - if not with me, then with Jun or Mr Garvey. Are you staying the day, Detective?"

The other benefit of three eyes: being able to watch the whole room. "I better head out before folks start waking up. Got a few errands, be easier if I avoid all the raiders." Though it was really, really tempting to stay for a while. Getting soft in your old age, Detective.

Codsworth bobs an eyestalk but it's Shaun that speaks up. "Um, Detective, before you go, I wanted to ask -" Shaun stops, scratching at his arm nervously. He glances up at his caretaker for a second, gathering strength for whatever it is Nick supposes. At least it shouldn't be any of the really annoying bullshit people tended to bring up, right? "I was wondering if I could call you Uncle Nick?" He finishes, finally, all in a rush that takes Nick a second to process.

... _Holy shit._

"Um, if you don't - it's okay, I just thought... I'm sorry, I won't bring it up again."

"No," Nick says, his mouth on autopilot _again_. At least his mouth kept saying the right stuff. "No, I - I didn't expect it. Kid, I - go right ahead, alright? I'd be honored to be your uncle."

Shaun smiles, bright enough to light up a room (that kid is going to be a heartbreaker when he grows up, if he grows up), and says, "Okay! Thank you, Uncle Nick," and Nick's old clockwork heart melts just a little bit. "I'll walk with you to the bridge?"

"Sure thing, kid," Nick replies with a smile. "I'll see you around, then, Codsworth. Thanks for your help."

"Of course, Detective. Safe travels." Shaun's already out of the house and off the front step - boundless energy from that kid - and Codsworth touches his pincer to Nick's left hand, briefly. "Thank you," he murmurs, almost inaudible, and Nick smiles back.

Whatever disaster the Commonwealth throws at them next - Nick's glad he has this.


End file.
